Video: Pottstown gospel singer is finalist on BET's Sunday Best'

POTTSTOWN — Candace Benson, a top-five finalist on tonight’s episode of the BET hit “Sunday Best,” almost skipped the qualifying audition all together.

“I changed my mind at the last minute,” and almost didn’t make the early morning drive to Washington, D.C., she said.

But her mom helped her change it back. “I’d been through auditions before, but we decided to approach it as an experience,” said Benson, 22.

It has turned out to be much more of an experience than the 2010 Pottstown High School graduate and music director at Bethel A.M.E. Church in West Chester bargained for.

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For those who haven’t seen it, “Sunday Best,” now in its seventh season, works much like “American Idol,” with viewers voting nationally for one of the last two finalists who have been winnowed from a larger group by celebrity judges, the only difference being that all the music is gospel music.

Benson, who has been singing in church since she was 10 and is studying music education and audio production at Montgomery County Community College, is still a little amazed at the speed with which she has climbed the show’s competitive ladder.

It all started early on an April morning.

“The doors opened at 7 a.m. and when we got there, we saw there were already hundreds of people on line; some of them had been camping out all night,” she recalled.

From these hundreds of hopefuls — not just in Washington, but in audition locations all over the country — only 20 would be picked to compete on televisions.

“We only had 15 seconds, so you just had to go in there and hit it and hope for the best,” said Benson.

She chose “Take Me to the King” by Tamela Mann, and she must have hit it in those 15 seconds because the next thing she knew, she was ushered in front of judges.

“We did three rounds that same day” and before she knew it, Benson was one of the 20 and was off to Georgia for the next episodes of the show.

And two episodes later, she’s still standing.

“The whole experience has been just mind-blowing in itself,” she said with a genuine smile.

Also smiling is her mother Sharon who, with father Charles and sister Karen, comprise the Benson Family Singers quartet, who sing “music with a positive message” at churches, conferences, weddings and funerals.

“When Candace was little, her brother” — singer Terrance Lyles, 19 years Candace’s senior — “would put her on his shoulders when he played the piano and soon enough I could hear her humming,” Sharon Benson recalled.

“By the time she was 2, she was picking songs out on the piano and soon she was creating songs. By 7, she had written her first song: ‘Don’t Be Discouraged,’” said Sharon Benson.

Benson’s parents decided to cultivate their daughter’s talent and sent her to the Collegeville Conservatory of Music for piano lessons and enrolled her in Pine Forge Academy, where she also took violin lessons.

Despite evidence of her affinity for music it wasn’t until a school trip to Hershey Park when she was 10 — and her brother’s ability to persuade her into a karoke booth to make a recording of the Brandy and Monica hit “The Boy is Mine” — that Benson’s true gifts came to light, said her mother.

“I was amazed and I said to her ‘why don’t you sing like this at home?’ and she said ‘because I knew then you would make me sing in front of people,’” Sharon Benson recalled with a laugh.

And she was right.

Her mother did make Candace sing in front of people -- at church, and everywhere else.

“When my mother gets an idea, she gets all quiet and I knew the can of worms has been opened,” Candace said with a knowing smile in her mother’s direction. “My parents really helped me get over my shyness, they taught me how to control it and come to grips with it.”

It helped, although, by the time she was named as a finalist in front of the three judges — Kierra Sheard, Donnie McClurkin and Yolanda Adams — she found “I didn’t know my knees could be that weak.”

Help also comes in the form of Kim Burrell, who mentors all the show’s contestants both on their musical performances and their stage presence.

In a recent episode, she advised Benson “to go all rock and roll” and “get yourself some leather.”

She did and it helped.

After that performance, McClurkin told Benson “you become the type of song you sing. You’re like a chameleon and that is the sign of a great artist.”

“You’ve got the ‘it’ factor,” Sheard told her.

Whether Benson’s got enough of ‘it’ to get to the final round and the chance to win a brand new Ford Fusion, a national recording contract with Fo Yo Soul /RCA Records and a cash prize, will be determined in part by how she performs Sunday night, at 8 p.m.

However far she advances, Benson said she would not have gotten there without her teachers.

She singled out retired Pottstown High School choral director Sally House as being one of them.

“She introduced me to other kinds of music, particularly classical music, and she taught me how to appreciate it in a deeper way,” Benson said, adding that she also “sang in the choir, and the show choir and played in the marching band” where she played clarinet, xylophone and, in her junior and senior year, the bass drum.

“I just went wherever they needed me,” she said.

She also credits her professors at Montgomery County Community College — Michael Kelly, Matt Porter and Andrew Kosciesza — with helping her to both hone her skills and expand her interests.

“They have a program there, called Montco’s Music Wednesdays, that’s kind of an open mike, but they have the cameras and the lights, and the stage setting and you can record your performance,” Benson said. “The professors there are just fantastic, they’re musicians themselves, so I go almost every Wednesday and its really helped me prepare.”

Montgomery County Community College President Karen Stout said the whole campus is rooting for Benson and said she has had as much of an impact on her professors as they have had on her.

“My parents know I’m going to do this music thing, but they also want me to have a plan B, and to me music and education just go together, but I also found I really like studio work,” Benson said.

“That’s one thing I would like people to know, that you can really develop a deeper passion by being educated, it really helps you to hone your skill.”

About the Author

Evan Brandt has worked for The Mercury since November 1997. His beat includes Pottstown, the surrounding townships and the Pottstown and Pottsgrove school districts, as well as other varied general topics like politics, the environment and education. Reach the author at ebrandt@pottsmerc.com
or follow Evan on Twitter: @PottstownNews.